The Pope asks priests and bishops to avoid divisions, "parties and consortia".
"One sins against the Spirit who is communion when one becomes, even for lightness, instruments of division" with "chatter" and "plays the game of the enemy, who does not come into the open and loves rumors and insinuations, foments parties and cohorts, feeds nostalgia for the past, distrust, pessimism, fear. Let us be careful, please, not to soil the anointing of the Spirit and the garment of the Holy Mother Church with disunity, with polarizations, with any lack of charity and communion", the Pope said in his homily.
Pope Francis is in the Vatican basilica where he presides over the Chrism Mass, a liturgy that is celebrated on this day in all cathedral churches
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The Chrism Mass is concelebrated by the Pope with the cardinals, the bishops, the Pope's vicar in Rome, Cardinal Angelo De Donatis, celebrant at the altar, and the priests of the diocese.
During the celebration, the priests renew the promises made at the time of their ordination;
then the blessing of the oil of the sick, of the oil of the catechumens and of the chrism takes place.
The Pope invites priests to "guard harmony" and to welcome and forgive everyone.
"Let's help each other, brothers, to preserve harmony, starting not with the others, but each one for himself; asking ourselves: in my words, in my comments, in what I say and write, is there the stamp of the Spirit or that of the world? I think also to the kindness of the priest: but often we priests are rude. harmony? How many do not approach or move away because in the Church they do not feel welcomed and loved, but viewed with suspicion and judged! In the name of God, we welcome and forgive, always! And we remember that being edgy and complaining,
The Pope invites priests to overcome their crises and never to fall into mediocrity
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"Everyone, sooner or later, happens to experience disappointments, hardships and weaknesses, with the ideal that seems to wear out among the demands of reality, while a certain habit takes over and some trials, previously difficult to imagine, make fidelity appear more uncomfortable than in the past", said the Pope in the homily of the Chrism Mass.
From this sense of disappointment "one can come out badly, gliding towards a certain mediocrity, dragging oneself tired into a normality where three dangerous temptations creep in: that of compromise, whereby one is satisfied with what one can do; that of substitutes, for which we try to 'recharge ourselves' with something other than our anointing; that of discouragement, which is the most common, whereby, unsatisfied, we go on through inertia".
For the Pope this is "the great risk:
while appearances remain intact, 'I am a priest, I am a priest', we withdraw into ourselves and try to get by listlessly;
the fragrance of the anointing no longer perfumes life and the heart does not expand but shrinks, enveloped in disenchantment". "When the priesthood slowly slips into clericalism, the priest forgets that he is a pastor to become a state cleric", warned the Pope. But a crisis can instead "also become the turning point of the priesthood, the decisive stage of the spiritual life, in which the last choice must be made between Jesus and the world, between the heroic nature of charity and mediocrity, between the cross and a certain well-being, between holiness and honest fidelity to religious commitment". The Pope reiterated to priests that "careerism" must be avoided.
In his homily for the Chrism Mass, the Pope asks priests in crisis to take courage to take the path of the Spirit again
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"Right now - said Pope Francis - I am remembering some of you who are in crisis, who are disoriented and who do not know how to get back on the road in this second anointing of the Spirit. I have these brothers in mind and I simply say: courage, the Lord is greater than your weaknesses, your sins. The double life will not help you, throw everything out the window either, go ahead, let yourself be caressed by the anointing of the Holy Spirit".